1. Field of the Inventive Concept
Apparatuses and methods of the present general inventive concept relate to a medium path converting unit, an image forming apparatus including the same and a control method thereof, and more particularly, to a medium path converting unit to reduce electrical stress, an image forming apparatus including the medium path converting unit and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus forms an image on a print medium and includes a photocopier, a printer, a multi-function device, a facsimile, etc.
While some image forming apparatuses have a single print medium moving path from a paper feeding operation through a printing operation to a discharging operation, other image forming apparatuses which enable printing on both sides of the print medium have another print medium moving path to supply the print medium printed on a single side thereof back to the apparatus.
An image forming apparatus which loads printed print media on a plurality of trays includes a plurality of moving paths to move the print media to the plurality of trays.
A path converting unit is disposed in a merging point of the plurality of moving paths to guide the print medium to one of the plurality of print medium moving paths. The path converting unit includes a solenoid, a plunger which is directly driven by the solenoid, and a guiding member and an elastic member which are driven by the plunger.
In default, the guiding member is disposed to open a first path and to close a second path as long as an external force is not applied by the solenoid. If the path needs to be converted, power is supplied to the solenoid, and the plunger pushes and moves the guiding member to open the second path and close the first path. If the path needs to be converted back to the first path, power supplied to the solenoid is cut off, and the plunger moves back to the original position by the elastic member. As the external force by the plunger is removed, the guiding member also moves back to the original position.
However, the path converting unit continues to supply power to the solenoid to continually maintain the second path as the moving path of the print medium. As a result, the solenoid generates heat and the plunger is magnetized to thereby cause malfunction.
Also, power consumption may increase due to continuous power supply.